Dragon Ball FighterZ Becomes Huge Concurrent Audience Favorite During EVO 2018

While Street Fighter V: Arcade Edition was still positioned in the Grand Finals for this [...]

Dragon Ball

While Street Fighter V: Arcade Edition was still positioned in the Grand Finals for this weekend's EVO tournament, there's a new king that's slowly working its way up the charts in terms of popularity -- Dragon Ball FighterZ.

Even in its second place position with finals Sunday night, the hit Bandai Namco anime brawler gained a huge audience with the tournament over the weekend. Even though it couldn't quite keep up with Street Fighter in the early rounds on Friday and Saturday, yesterday proved to be the difference maker for the newcomer.

Based on this report from Githy P, FighterZ attained a record audience of 258,000 concurrent viewers during its finals. That manages to set a new record for highest viewer count ever for an EVO main event tournament.

This follows the news that the game had the most registered entrants for the tournaments leading into this weekend, including its own producer. And the main event was well worth watching, with SonicFox managing to beat out Japan's Go1 with ease.

That said, the viewership didn't last as there was a small drop-off when Street Fighter V took over. Fortunately, Tyler "Ninja" Blevins lent a hand by hosting his own stream, providing an additional 60,000 viewers as a result. Without that, there's a chance that other games like Tekken 7 and Super Smash Bros. could have had an equal audience. It's still high viewership across the board, but FighterZ's main event stood out as a noticeable highlight for the night.

So what does this mean? Well, a lot of fighting fans see Street Fighter as the signature main event for EVO tournaments, since it does bring out the best of the best. That said, though, Dragon Ball FighterZ's popularity shouldn't be denied in the least, as it's insane how popular it's becoming. And fans were also treated to a surprise reveal of Cooler, Frieza's older brother, who will soon be joining the ranks.

We'll have to see where EVO moves on from here, but it's safe to note that the organizers are certainly paying attention.

Dragon Ball FighterZ is available now for Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC; and will release on September 28 for Nintendo Switch.

(Hat tip to Nibel for the scoop!)

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